There is short description of my 23cm EME setup:
I must to write, that in December 2013 my EME dish was damaged by hard snow load (snow in Israel !!! – I’ve not designed mechanics for this case), so since this time it is not operational for EME and used for Satellite TV.
- First one is initial variant that uses unmodified 1.8m dish and Azimuth/Elevation mechanic
My first QSO with PI9CAM was done at 8:40 UTC 10-07-2010 using 1.8m dish and 10W output power.
Further I had built single MRF-286 W6PQL amplifier that gave me 50W output to feed.
Next step – I added to the dish above 1.8m dish “extra size”, extended it by mesh up to 2.6m diameter, shape is not exactly parabolic, but gave me gain improvements close to expected
Currently I had built 2xMRF286 amplifier of W6PQL design, it give me now near 100W only, but I have not finished its tuning yet.
So my present EME Setup is:
Transverter: self maid 1296Mhz/28Mhz + Yaesu FT897D / AFEDRI SDR (on RX)
Antenna: 2.6m dish (1.8m SatTV dish extended by mesh)
Feed: OK1DFC
LNA: G4DDK ~0.3dBNf
PA: 100W amplifier (2xMRF-286 W6PQL design)
There you can download and hear recorded I/Q file of DUBUS CW EME Contest that was done on my system using AFEDRI SDR receiver + 1296MHz/28MHz transverter.
next page has information about my dish’s Azimuth/Elevation control.